Interior - The Inside Scoop

Tips on how to upgrade your interior

The interior of a car is usually overlooked as one of the main cool factors of a super Chevy. The driveline, paint job, and stance are on the top of the bragging list, but the fact is we interact with the interior the most. Upholstery is usually sourced out to a shop since it takes special skills and tools, but we are here to tell you upholstery can be done at home. We're not talking about sewing up a custom interior; we are talking about restoration and mildly modified. Thanks to aftermarket companies, you can get pre-sewn seat covers, headliners, carpet kits and so on that you can install at home. We have scoured our archive to bring you some of the best tips and tricks on the subject of interior restoration. Lastly, we provided a nice fat source list at the end of the story so you know where to get the products mentioned throughout this article.

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18 Kick Some Jams Our last tip we can pass along has to do with adding speakers to a muscle car. None of these '60s/early '70s-era cars were designed with great audio systems, so adding modern speakers can be a real pain. A great way to get some full size speakers up front without doing any permanent damage to the doors or door panels is to buy a set of these new kick panels from companies like Year One, National Parts Depot, or Original Parts Group. They are redesigned to house the speaker and still fit in the interior. The E-brake will need to be spaced over, but other than that is the simplest way to flush out your audio system.

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Interior - The Inside Scoop

1Heat Is Your Friend Before you install seat covers, a headliner, or carpet, you should pull the products out of their boxes and lay them flat out in the sun for about an hour. This will relax the wrinkles in the material from being folded up in the boxes and make it easier to work with when you get to the installation.

2aFoam Fix Not all foam needs to be replaced. If the foam doesn't crumble away when you touch it, then any craters can be filled back in with some new foam. Just glue in a chunk of donor foam and then shaped with a grinder.

2b If you don't have a grinder, you can sit with a razor blade and cut off the excess. Here is a tip straight from us, but don't tell the old lady. The electric carving knife in the kitchen works wonders when you are shaping foam...

2c...but don't let her catch you using it or you will have to buy a new one. Trust us, "I'll clean it before I put it back" won't fly and if it does, can we come over and use your oven to powdercoat a few brackets?

3Get The Scratch Out It doesn't matter how clean your interior is--if you have to look through dirty or scratched glass to see it, it's not going to look as good. Just because your side glass has scratches in it doesn't mean you have to either live with them or fork over a ton of cash to replace it. Eastwood has a scratch removal kit specifically made to polish out those unsightly lines in the glass. This kit will also remove any hard water spots or overspray as well.

4a Get The Salvage Right Salvage is the material on the backside of the stitch (top image) and if it's not consistently on one side or the other, it will make the seam look wavy on top.

4b You want to orient the salvage to point down along the edge of the seat. To do this, starting at the side, pull the cover till it lines up with the edge of the cushion. Roll the cover over, turning it right side out over the cushion in a smooth motion.

4c Make sure to keep the edge of the cover aligned with the edge of the cushion. If it doesn't go, you can always pull it back up and try again.

5Bag It Adding a plastic bag to the corners of the seat to be covered will help you slip the cover down over the foam or cotton. The foam or cotton won’t let the cover slide very easily, so adding a simple plastic bag will let the cover slip down nice and smooth. Then, when you have the cover pulled on, you can reach up inside and pull the bag out.

6aStart Half Way Inside Out When installing a cover it's best to turn it half-way inside out. Then you can slip the cover down. Did you use a plastic bag?

6b Once you have it all the way down on top you can slowly roll the lower portion of the cover down. Trust us when we say this is much easier than trying to slip the cover all the way down the seat.

7 It's A Spring Thing. It's not uncommon to find a broken spring in your seats, typically on the outside edge. These are the ones that take all the abuse of you getting in and out of the car. There are replacement springs on the market, but sometimes you just don't have time to order a replacement. One way to get the seat to feel right again is to rob one from somewhere else in the seat and re-bend it if necessary to fit in your new location. Look to the passenger side spring, as these tend to be in good shape. Then you can just re-bend the broken spring and put it where you got the replacement.

8a Clean Those Bows. During a bow-style headliner install, make sure to clean off all the rust that gets on the bows with some Scotch-Brite.

8b This will help it slide into the listing much easier and also help when you go to stretch the headliner side to side.

9 Tape It Up. During a seat cover installation, you are going to run into stiff wires inside listings in certain places. Most of the factory wires that were used are covered in a twisted paper. Well, this paper dries out and can make slipping the wire into the new cover a pain in the you-know-what. Wrapping it in a layer of masking tape will alleviate this problem.

10a Please Remain Seated With aftermarket suspension, tires, and brakes getting better and better, the older muscle cars are capable of handling way beyond what the GM engineers could expect back in the day. One issue that almost immediately shows up after doing a suspension upgrade is the lack of bolstering support in the factory seats. There are two great options to keep you behind the wheel where you belong.

10b For the guy who wants the interior to look stock, TMI products has the Sport Seat foam and covers. These get installed over a factory frame and offer more bolter support. If you need even more hold from your seat then you'll need to look at a full aftermarket unit, like the Corbeau GTS II. This budget-friendly seat offers a lot of thigh and kidney supports while still maintaining stock-ish dimensions. Corbeau also offers track assemblies that will bolt right into Camaros, Chevelles, Impalas, and Novas, to name a few.

11 Save Those Scraps. When you are adding sound dampening material like DEI's Boom Mat to your car, it's a good idea to save all the little scraps. These can be used to fill small voids and since this stuff isn't what we would consider cheap, it's a great way to make your dollar spent go a lot further.

12 Tools Of The Trade. If you plan on doing any type of interior restoration, you are going to need a few specific tools and sundries. A heat gun will be used to relax the material, but if you don't have one of these you could always use the old lady's hair dryer. You will also need a few screwdrivers, a putty knife, scissors or razor blade, hog ring pliers, and a Scratch Awl. You are going to need to glue some stuff as well, and you have two options here. You could buy a cheap/used spray gun and fill it with a professional grade contact adhesive like DAP's Weldwood. If you are just going to do one small job, then a can of Permatex Heavy Duty Headliner & Carpet Adhesive or 3M's Super 77 Multipurpose Adhesive will do just fine.

13a Smooth Out That Headliner. Installing a bow-style headliner can be a daunting task, but the most critical part is trimming the listing to get the sides smoothed out.

13b Here is a quick overview on how to do it right. Carefully cut the listings back so the material can be pulled down. Get in there with your scissors and trim the listing just enough to let you stretch out the wrinkles.

13c Once you have all the listings trimmed, make a cut on each side of the sewn line.

13d You want to pull on the seams and use your other hand to work the material down getting out the wrinkles. Once its smooth, pop in a few staples and move on to the next seam.

14 Awl Together Now. A Scratch Awl will be your best friend when it comes time to reinstall things like trim or sun visors. Since you have just installed new material it will be hiding all the little screw holes and the awl will help you locate the holes quickly, but also aid in lining up the part being installed. If you don't have an actual awl, you can sacrifice an old Phillips screwdriver to make one.

15a Make Them Pop. Sometimes a little detail can go along way. Take, for instance, the needles on the gauge cluster. Over time the bright orange fades and loses its pop. It's pretty easy to bring them back to their original glory with a little florescent paint. There are two ways to paint the needles, one is to cut a slit in some paper and slip it behind the needle.

15b Then all you have to do is spray some flat paint in light even coats. We prefer to use a brush to apply the paint because it gives us a little bit more control. Spray the paint directly into the cap then all you have to do is dip the brush and go. If you load the brush with the right amount of paint once you touch it to the needle it will produce a little blob that you can just drag down.

16a I Can See Clearly Now... While you are working on the cluster, you might as well polish the lens.

16b These are a pretty soft plastic and scratch very easily, but with a little elbow grease, a soft cloth and some Mother's Plastic Polish, it can be clear again.

17a Get Those Rivets Flat. When assembling door panels, you will run into a situation where you'll need to bond the new cardboard door panel to a metal cap. We found the best way to do this is with pop rivets, but you will need to do the following so they won't show up after you compete the job.

17b After installing the pop rivet from the backside, use a small drift to drive out the mandrel piece. Flip over the panel and back up the rivet with a body-working dolly. Then with a hammer flatten out the rivets as much as possible. As you can se by the side by side of the before and after this smashing down technique leaves the flattest rivet possible on this end and the large head of the rivet on the other side.

18 Kick Some Jams Our last tip we can pass along has to do with adding speakers to a muscle car. None of these '60s/early '70s-era cars were designed with great audio systems, so adding modern speakers can be a real pain. A great way to get some full size speakers up front without doing any permanent damage to the doors or door panels is to buy a set of these new kick panels from companies like Year One, National Parts Depot, or Original Parts Group. They are redesigned to house the speaker and still fit in the interior. The E-brake will need to be spaced over, but other than that is the simplest way to flush out your audio system.

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